Monday, November 7, 2011

Changing Our Minds: The Problem with Blacks and Whores

Blacks are lazy and need someone to keep after them or they won't work.

Blacks are like lost children without their masters; they need to be taken care of.

Blacks are from the line of Cain and biblically deserve to be enslaved.

Blacks aren't smart enough to read...hold a job...be free.

Blacks exist for whites.

Blacks like being slaves.

I shudder as I type these sentences, as you probably do reading them. Yet this was once the mentality of thousands of people throughout the United States. These were all lies people told themselves to feel better about their greed and oppressive actions. And the whites who believed these lies so many years ago really believed them - to their core. I wanted to use the "N" word in those sentences, to make them powerful and punch you in the face while you read this post, but 150 years of fighting for the dignity and equality of a once dehumanized portion of our population has been bred into my bones until it is impossible for me to use such an offense word. Because I really believe Blacks are fully human, they are not intrinsically lazy, they are not biblically mandated to be slaves, and they are equal in intelligence, skill, and worth. For me, a 21st century white person, it is incomprehensible that people once saw the world differently. The fight has been worth it.*

But now we face a new foe (or, rather, an old that has yet to be conquered). That of The Whore.

Whores are dirty girls who like sex and deserve what they get.

Whores don't mind being used by 50 men a day - hell, they're whores.

Whores (as women) biblically must submit to men in all things, including sex.

Whores (as women) are like emotional children who need to be led by a non-emotional man.

Whores aren't smart enough to hold a job other than whoring.

Whores are the problem; they tempted the men in the first place.

Whores (as women) exist for men.

Whores like prostituting.

If you don't believe that the above-listed mentalities exist - and strongly - then we're not gonna get far in this fight against sex trafficking. Trafficking begins as a mentality. A girl is a whore before she is ever forced into prostitution. She's a whore in the eyes of the mother who blames her when her dad rapes her. She's a whore in the eyes of her classmates when she becomes promiscuous at school. She's a whore in the eyes of the woman whose husband chooses to look at her...hit on her...sleep with her. It is my strong belief that any girl roped into trafficking (not kidnapped and physically forced as some are, but rather coerced and manipulated) has some extreme brokenness in her past. Rape by an older brother. Rape by a neighbor. Physical abuse by her parents. There is something disconnecting in her that allows her to stay in a place where she's used 50 times a day - because no healthy woman wants to have sex 50 times a day with potentially disease-ridden, often physically abusive men.

If I have not convinced you that our collective prejudice against "The Whore" is one of the bonds holding her in captivity, then why is a girl picked up by the cops 100 times and her pimp not once? Because she's the problem. She's the one giving her body to the john. Forget the father who raped her, the trafficker who addicted her to drugs, or the pimp who threatens her with death if she tries to escape. Or why when I went to an anti-trafficking fundraising dinner did they only raise $7,000 for a recovery home, when I've been to pro-life dinners that have raised $20,000? Because we're still not sure these girls are worth saving...after all, they got themselves into this in the first place, right? **

Need more of an argument? I went to a signature-gathering training this weekend for an initiative strengthening laws against traffickers. Someone raised the question of why the initiative would only strengthen laws against traffickers and not against the johns. Our speaker said she'd fought to have something written in about johns, but all of her legal counsel told her not to. Why? "Because as a society we're still not ready for that. The john is still not seen as a bad guy and the girl is still seen as a whore. Were we to write harsher laws for johns into our initiative, it would not be passed." Whoa. Yes, in a way most of the U.S. doesn't understand, our problem is The Whore. Earlier I said I couldn't even type the "N" word, because it is so offensive. Yet 150 years ago people would have thought that impossible. My hope - my sometimes shy, wavering, timid hope - is that 150 years from now, "whore" will be an equally offensive word because of how it once meant the dehumanization of half our population. Let's start changing our minds. Let's start seeing "The Whore "as the victimized girl she really is and get her the proper aid she needs to live a healthy and fulfilled life. Let's erase "whore" from our vocabulary and our mindset and start treating all people with respect and dignity.

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*This is not negating that racism still exists in our world. It does. Yet how far we've come from those days!

**Why, if we're going to turn our backs on them 13 years
down the road, bother being pro-life when we know many of the children
"saved" are going to be born into potentially abusive situations that
will make them vulnerable to trafficking in the first place? Why are we
so shortsighted? At the risk of making all my conservative friends
angry, if we are unwilling to change our minds about "The Whore" then I
would almost rather see the poor things killed in the womb before they
are later rejected by us noble folk who've worked so hard to give them a
chance at "life". If we're going to be pro-life, we need to be willing
to go all the way.